5+ Best Free File Compare and Merge Software List

When your work involves comparison between files and folders, an efficient software becomes a must to assist you to do your work efficiently. Though there are many file compare and merge software that are commercially available, here we present some neat file comparison and merging software that are comparable to the commercially available ones. These applications not only help in comparing files and folders but also help in merging the changes.

Source: www.sharpbrains.com

1. WinMerge

WinMerge is an open source differencing and merging tool for Windows that can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text in a easy to understand format. WinMerge is highly useful for determining what has changed between project versions, and then merging changes between versions.

2. Meld Meld is a open source, visual diff and merge tool for Mac and Linux. You can compare two or three files and edit them in place. The diffs updates dynamically. It also allows comparing two or three folders and launching file comparisons in them. It allows viewing a working copy from version control systems such as CVS,Subversion, Bazaar-ng and Mercurial.

Kompare is a open source graphical difference viewer for Linux that allows you to visualize changes to a file. This tool comes handy for developer comparing source code or seeing difference between research paper draft and the final document.

KDiff3 is a open source file and directory diff and merge tool for Windows, Linux and Mac which compares and merges two or three text input files or directories. It shows the differences line by line and character by character, provides an automatic merge-facility, has an editor for comfortable solving of merge-conflicts.